To discover what type of relationship is of ethical value, we must understand ethics: its nature and task, its goal and characteristics. This, in turn, requires reflection on our personal life in order appropriately to shape our behavior.

One proceeds from an encounter and is called to establish a whole series of encounters; these are not just personal, but of every kind. Literary works and biographies help us to discover the different personal spheres we may develop during life. Each reflects a special form of existence, for at some time each person asks "what is going to become of me". Animals do not ask this question. The cat – however sharp – never stops to wonder what will happen to it in the future. It simply lives, reeling off each moment of its existence as a child unwinds the string of a kite. We can foretell at every moment that the cat will constantly obeys the dictates of its species exactly as written in its biological code. It holds no surprises for us.

The human being, when born, is not programmed with everything he will accomplish. His faculties are programmed: his intelligence, vision and his whole organic condition up to the color of his eyes. But his possibilities, are not programmed; but will be evoked by his choice.

What one becomes is determined by one’s faculties, the possibilities one receives, and the choice one makes at each moment. Youths today have faculties similar to, or in some cases lesser than those Leonardo da Vinci, but they have possibilities that de Vinci could not have foreseen, such as the theoretical and technical knowledge for the construction of an airplane. If the youth enrolls in a school of aviation, modern society affords him the possibility of flying.

If with one’s faculties and possibilities one shapes one’s life, what direction should one give it? It may be directed towards love or hate, and within love towards personal or erotic love, towards generosity or egoism, towards construction or destruction.

Does it matter which direction one gives one’s life; can one choose at whim? Some believe that one has total freedom to make whatever decisions one wishes. This assumes that the mere fact of desiring something makes it good for human life. But does desire really have this power? I can have many wishes, but are they all justified, that is, adapted to what I am called to accomplish in life and want to become?

It is simplest to believe that I need not worry about becoming something particular, that it is sufficient to live each moment of life as intensely as possible so as to obtain maximum advantages and satisfactions. I do not need to take care of the past which no longer exists, nor of the future which has not yet become a reality. This day to day living sometimes is suggested as a model for realistic behavior. What is real is the bird I have in my hand at this moment; abandoning present rewards in favor of an ideal which may appear in the future does not seem realistic or sensible.

But modern research on the philosophy of history teaches that while the ideal is future inasmuch as we have not yet fully achieved it, we do try because its value is already attracting us. This power of attraction is similar to the influence of a musical piece on the performer: he tries to recreate it, but does so in virtue of its formative energy. The ideal then is not a mere idea, but one which motivates and gives meaning to every action.

Is it necessary to guide life towards a determined goal taken as an ideal? One is not fully formed, but has to guide oneself towards that form. To a certain extent, this guidance is prefixed by the fact that the human being comes from a personal encounter and needs to establish a web of affection with his environment, which becomes the proto-ambit of his life.

This is decisive. Animals have instincts which lead them to what is necessary to keep alive. Their instincts guide them along the course of their species, to leave which would mean destruction.

The human is not completely channelled by his species. It gives him powers to adopt a certain range of possibilities, but does not dictate what possibilities he should select or what type of behavior he must adopt. The person is free to establish one type of life or another. But this freedom in no way means arbitrariness for it is a universal law of life that all who enjoy a certain initiative must choose that which increases their reality and enables them to develop, not that which impoverishes and destroys. We know from scientific and other sources of knowledge that one develops and perfects himself as a person through creating encounters. This is possible only when two beings intermingle their personal sphere in love. This dialogical encounter must be the goal in human life for it is its last source for meaningful action.

Here we discover another decisive law in the life of man. If dialogue, encounter and mutual love are the ideal of human life, this must be directed in such a way that at every moment and in all aspects it unfolds in a relational manner in the personal sphere.

One’s thinking, feeling, wanting, acting must have a dialogical nature for one must search for truth in community, that is, in collaboration with other people and groups. Looking together in the same direction is possible only when that reality is loved along with the companions in the search. The thoughts and ideas gathered in this dialogical form must be expressed with love or a desire to create true communication. This happens when we share sincerely with others the knowledge by which we adjust to reality and, thus, to our development as people.

This generous communication does good for all and hence creates a strong union: nothing so unites person as doing good together. You share with me your greatest richness: the knowledge you need to become a full person. I receive this and, together with my own experience, pass it both back to you and on to others. This dialogical intellectual life is the sure path towards the ideal of encounter and creative unity.

The life of love must also be dialogical and relational in order to meet the goal which must guide human life. Marital love implies various feelings and desires which must be guided dialogically. Their goal must not consist in self gratification alone, but in establishing spheres of full co-existence. What is rejected is not satisfactions, but obtaining it in a selfish and solitary manner.

To direct our wishes, feelings, ideas and actions dialogically, is to cultivate all the virtues as they shape our will to the ideal of unity. Their value is not in themselves, but in their relation to the goal sought. We practice virtues by wanting, feeling, thinking, acting and loving, not in response to dictates or precepts imposed from outside, but as fulfilling the deepest demands of our being.

Strength, tenacity, magnanimity, honesty, truth, humility, patience, etc. – every virtue contributes to building the person; they are called virtutes in Latin or constructive forces. These virtues or forces of human action are possible when one follows the ideal in some independence from the immediate moment and with sufficient inner freedom to adapt to the demands of the goal. Here the same biological action can be ethically negative in one case and positive in another: it is positive when it contributes to achieving the ideal; it is negative when for immediate gain it draws one away from the ideal. Numbness in achieving the ideal is typical of vice.

Everything in man’s life must be pointed towards the ideal of unity and gravitate towards establishing high forms of unity if it is to be genuine. From this three very important conclusions are derived:

1. In every person’s being there must be a unity, balance or adjustment of each aspect of life to the others. Sensitivity and intelligence, body and spirit, desires and ideals, freedom and norms must harmonize and be complementary.

2. Active collaboration must occur between the integrated man and the realities of the environment; such collaboration stands out in reversible experiences.

3. This collaboration is viable only when we discover in the surrounding realities certain values or possibilities for attaining our ideal.

Values are relevant to our developing life; they are possibilities which we must actively assume for our full personal realization. Values not only exist, but assert themselves in order for the person assuming and carrying them out to reach fulfillment.

Fidelity, pity, respect, modesty, honesty, etc. are values. They are important in themselves; their relevance does not depend on our caprice. It is not man who decides whether they are valuable or not; the value they have in themselves is revealed in their effectiveness when one responds to their call. Values must be learned dynamically, creatively, distinctly in a relational and committed manner, not coldly and ascetically.

When assumed, values inspire the hope of realizing oneself. When we do not heed the call of values, which requires generosity, but grasp the individualistic satisfactions of the moment, we turn into dreamers. We look for the poor fulfillment had from immediate and solitary satisfaction, but this is a vain and false illusion. For enclosure within egoism closes us to the wealth of relationships and therefore draws us apart from the most genuine human vocation.

An art critic and poet verbally attacked a young journalist for not having underlined in his article the poet’s participation. He destroyed a personal relationship out of interest solely in his individual gain. This example enables us to clearly define two points of major interest:

a) which attitudes must be considered as infraethical or amoral, and

b) at what moment does ethical life begins and under which conditions does the human being attains ethical fulfillment.

To measure the height at which we stand in the creation of the human sphere, and therefore of ethics or morality, we must determine the attitudes which would place one below the ethical level. The ethical level is the plane on which creative activities are carried out, creating spheres of every type, particularly genuine personal relationships. All that creates co-existence is ethically valuable; all that destroys interpersonal links constitutes an ethical antivalue.

Those who do not worry about the creative or destructive nature of their actions, because they strive only to accumulate pleasant sensations, move on an infraethical level. They do not even enter the sphere of ethical or creative life. This attitude of indifference is a serious negative since it leaves one at the margin of the possibilities of personal development and everything one does in life will be affected by this negative sign. Each act, by pursuing only self satisfaction and being confined within one’s selfishness, lacks ethical value or simply is not "good". What is radically "bad" and constitutes the source of evil in various acts is the basic attitude totally separated from creativity.

Some say that, a person who is unconcerned with the goodness or badness of his actions, seeing them only from his own individual outlook, lives an "innocent" life, far removed from good and evil; that one’s acts are "indifferent" when they spring from a basic indifference to all ethical duty. Because they are indifferent and morally neutral, they conclude, such acts may be the object of free and arbitrary choice: one can do or not do this as one prefers.

This is a comfortable position; in principle it appears liberal, generous and peaceful. But it is false at the very root. No one is justified in adopting an attitude of indifference to the elementary duty of growing or bringing their being to its full development; this obligation is inherent in every person alive. Plants and animals automatically develop all they have written in their inner program. Man, on the other hand, must program his life in a rational and voluntary way. If not, he confounds the deepest demands of his own being, upsets the balance, and is out of the game. As unbalanced, no actions will be right, real, or fruitful in shaping the "second nature" (the "êthos") which one must acquire through molding one’s personality.

One television series about sex devoted a good part of the time to describing various forms of sexual activity and stressing their satisfying aspects. The speaker never questioned whether merely gaining gratifying and exciting sensations morally justified an action. A good number of programs never touched on the ethical problem, as if sexual relationships had no other meaning than to satisfy instincts and quench erotic desires. But at a certain point, when a young person asked if he should agree to carry out certain perverse sexual practices, she firmly replied: "If the person suggesting it wants to destroy you, then you should not accept. Otherwise, you can do what you like. Those practices are one of many options. Simply choose them freely."

This exclusion is ethically negative for it impedes the creative activity which constitutes the nucleus and marks the beginning of a valuable ethical life. Sören Kierkegaard considered mere surrender to immediate pleasures to be infraethical and infracreative. Such an attitude sometimes is presented as a liberation from ethics, which is interpreted as repressing instincts and as an enemy of the great feast of life. It does not liberate from oppression, however, but oppresses because it withdraws from the links which make man free. This withdrawal puts man below the level at which he forges his maturity as a person, which is the level of ethical life.

Understanding the rupture of ties to be access to freedom is mere illusion. To understand this from within, we must analyze the characteristics of a person whose ideal is the accumulation of pleasurable sensations. Note how one characteristic provokes the following one and all form a process of vertigo, which does not develop, but stagnates and stifles the human being.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE A-MORAL,

One who wishes only to be filled with pleasant impressions lives in search of sensations, which are idolized and in which one wishes to drown oneself. But resting here is impossible because sensations fade and joyous moments dissolve in time. In such ephemeral moments, one who is focused upon sensations strives repeatedly to experience gratifying sensations so that opportunities for pleasure do not escape. He thus becomes a person devoted to enjoyment clinging to the happiness of the day (Horatio), enjoying the beauty of the instant (A. Gide) and trying to stop time in its flight (A. de Lamartine). But all this is in vain, for bodily sensations do not last. They have a very poor form of temporality, whereas experiences which last through time are above the level of sensitivity and enjoy a higher type of temporality.

The person devoted to enjoyment feels hounded by the passage of time and wishes to imprison it by incessantly repeating sensations. To do so he tries to control the realities which are the source of sense pleasures. For this he reduces all around him to a means for his own ends. He does not wish to collaborate with others in achieving something in common or to convince, but to vanquish them at any price, to impose himself and rule, to possess them, to have them under his control and to manipulate them.

The selfish person develops his capacity for calculating to the maximum, while leaving his creative power in suspense. He does not create a co-existence with others, but feels lonely, irritated with himself, and empty of all that is not an illusion of power.

Fascinated by the ambition to control everything from his own loneliness, this dreamer confuses emptiness with independence; he believes that by confronting everyone he endows himself with great personality. So he becomes a weak being, for man in his solitary state loses his personal identity. Under the illusion that he has a personality, he does his utmost to fulfil his desire for satisfactions, but in this he lives only by the dictates of his species, without taking charge of his personal existence.

When he realizes his lack of real freedom from having broken the link with all around him, the dreamer feels deceived and insecure and out of balance due to separating from everything that confirms his reality. He imagines that by increasing his control over things and persons he may feel secure, and thus becomes obsessed with having and possessing. This, in turn, induces him to abandon himself to external realities and to be alienated in them.

He feels lost because he is incapable of relating to their creativity and actively responding to his real possibilities. This stifling solitude, in the end, generates desperation, the bitter consciousness of having closed off access to fulfillment as a person.

Reviewing the foregoing, we see that one who is fascinated by sensation suffers from triple illusion:

a) He believes himself closely united to reality, when in fact he is linked only tangentially.

b) He thinks he is highly free because he has broken ties that signify connections, norms and direction, and does not realize the connection between values and life. They limit choices, but enable the only real human freedom, namely, to be creative.

c) He considers liberation to be giving free rein to throbbing instincts, without realizing that this is submitting to the rule of the species.

The consequences of this triple illusion are very serious. Authors well versed in clinical psychology warn that persons who rescind from norms and precepts which orient and give meaning to one’s sexuality first believe that they are freeing themselves from the iron dictatorship of the "super ego", the guiding judge of human life. For such freedom, they deliver themselves to the forces of instinct, as the key to human happiness and the source of all gratification. Soon, however, being given over to immediate gain with no sense of anything surpassing pleasure, they find themselves trapped in a selfish atmosphere which encases them in what Lacan calls the "libidinal omelette", an attitude toward life driven by the sole goal of selfishly accumulating pleasure.

This retreat into the closed circuit of the ego takes one back to infantile individualist stages, which, due to their lack of creativity, have matured little or not at all. Whereas creative activity is open and collaborative, narcissistic submersion in one’s own interests prevents one from opening to the invitation of true values. Being devoted to enjoyment as the sole goal, one is imprisoned by gratifying stimulae and does not listen to the invitation to establish creative ambits of co-existence and relationships. In Freudian terms one follows the "principle of pleasure", not that of reality.

By attending only to pleasures of the senses, the person who has fallen into vertigo is incapable of integrating his internal sources of energy: the instinctive and voluntary, the bodily and spiritual, the spontaneous and reflexive. This inability prevents him from taking charge of his tendencies, guiding them towards an ideal, giving them meaning and accumulating them with inner freedom. Not being assumed into the magnetic field of an ideal value which centers and dynamizes one’s whole personal life, the tendencies remain de-centered and isolated. Left to themselves, such urges are insatiable, always asking for more because sensation becomes dull and needs ever more intense stimulae in order to maintain the same threshold of excitement.

For the person, these ever increasing demands of tendencies separated from the ideal mean not inner freedom, but servitude. One who has surrendered to vertigo feels overrun. One is free to surrender to vertigo, but by so doing renounces one’s inner freedom and is dragged along by a higher force that carries one where one does not want to go. To free basic urges from all ideals, values, norms and precepts is a one-sided decision; at first it produces euphoria, but deception and spiritual asphyxiation soon follow.

The person in vertigo wants only the bird in hand or immediate satisfaction. Kierkegaard described this attitude very well in The Mortal Illness:

This unjust unilateralness renders us biased in making choices, manic and obsessive; it fixes our attention on one part of our personal reality and blocks us from all else. If a perfect machine lacks a vital part it becomes scrap. Similarly, personal life, if it does not correctly integrate all its parts disintegrates and loses dynamism and value.

Ethical life begins when one realizes that it is not enough to let oneself be carried along by pleasurable sensations; that human life develops only by drawing up a plan for life, following an ideal, and choosing those factors which render it possible. From childhood we find by experience that man is not a static, but a dynamic being who must constantly grow. To do this one is obliged to choose at every moment those elements which enable one to achieve what he requires in order to be true to his vocation and mission. The radical vocation of every person is to establish the highest mode of unity in each order. This is possible only when we do deal not simply with the immediately pleasurable, but are attentive to what is of value.

Such attention requires detachment from one’s own interests and a corresponding inner freedom that opens to a wider horizon. If when absorbed in some favorite activity I hear a call for help what should I do? Carry on with my activity or give up my momentary interest in order to help the person who calls? I make a hierarchy or order of values: first piety and then pleasure and choose the former. This grading supposes relinquishing a value, that is, choosing between two values and giving preference to the higher, even at a sacrifice. This sacrifice does not mean repression, however, but preferring a higher value to a lower one and thereby raising oneself to a higher level of personal achievement.

Moreover, preference does not mean leaving a value aside, but joining it to another higher one, assuming it within that field of meaning, pointing it in the right direction into a more relevant field of action. Physical intimacy in marriage has precise meaning and value for the pleasure it holds in satisfying an impulse, etc. But, in married life, every act of corporal intimacy is a living expression of personal love, of giving oneself generously to one’s spouse, of the strong will to participate in a common plan and to join two lives in the pursuit of the same ideal. Living the particular as a means by which all these aims are reached does not lessen its meaning, but rather emphasizes it by conferring upon it its full significance. All its value in the first horizon is maintained and strengthened when it is assumed into a wider field of action.

The ethical attitude depends on our capacity to integrate several values in our life and to coordinate different attitudes and acts. Such coordination and integration enable one to create high bonds of unity with the realities in his environment. Such forms of creativity imply a high level of personal perfection and, therefore, of ethical maturity.

A synoptic review of the foregoing gives a precise idea of what is understood by Ethics. The life of a human being is not fully programmed; it must be planned and accomplished consciously and freely. One does this by playing in the sense of establishing spheres of life and engaging in them. This web of spheres forms a "second nature" in man, a special way of acting, choosing and seeing reality, called in Greek êthos.

Ethics is not only a matter of customs ("mores" in Latin, from which the term "moral" is derived). It is the analysis of the "second nature" that man must work out by establishing spheres of activity of every kind: co-existence, professional and artistic life, religious elevation, etc.

One develops as a person by establishing spheres of engagement because one is a being of relationship and encounter; one lives as a person, unfolds and perfects oneself by interpersonal encounters. Encounters take place only between realities that are spheres of engagement, whereas an object is treated as a reality that can be controlled, but not encountered. To avoid reducing something to a mere object, requires an attitude of respect. Respecting a person means letting them be as they are. But as a person is a developing being respecting him or her means helping them become what they are destined to be. Respect, therefore, implies collaboration; it supposes an intermingling or mutual enrichment of two ambits which generates encounter and enkindles love.

Loving someone means founding with them high levels of unity. That ethics stresses love not as mere sentimental exuberance, but as a creative force of encounter or interrelation makes sense for this is the goal of personal life, its driving idea or ideal. Today great writers show that all human life is oriented by generous love. From such love comes all ethical life, which in turn culminates therein (Gilleman). Hence, giving love its full scope rather than diminishing it is a matter of decisive importance for once diminished it can no longer be a genuine ideal of human life.

Love, along with encounter, is destroyed by vertigo, but strengthened by ecstasy. Human origins are in a sphere of love; its destiny is to establish other such spheres. One who actively immerses oneself in this field of love – the process which comes from and leads to love – lives creatively and ecstatically. He or she acquires a dialogical and relational mentality with exalted feelings as second nature.

On the other hand, one who withdraws from this circuit of love becomes disoriented and off balance, trapped within one’s egoism, and surrenders to the elements of vertigo which obstruct any rise to the true ideal of establishing high levels of unity. This obstruction is similar to the defects in a door which prevent it from moving smoothly. The vertiginous person, acting in a shortsighted manner inspired by egoism, acquires forms of conduct or habits which weave a "vicious" second nature that bars his or her path towards the ideal of unity.

This schematic view of life enables us to see the fruitfulness of personal love, which joins and integrates all the forces in the human being in contrast to the disintegrating power of a love reduced to mere eroticism, which breaks apart and isolates such energies.

The tendency to integrate or disintegrate the sources of human dynamism determines the ethical meaning of one’s life. The dynamism involved in achieving an "integrative ethical life" will be the subject of the next chapter.

From his vantage point as a doctor wishing to orient human life to its true being, Viktor Frankl warns that the goal of education is not to impose precepts on man, but to direct him towards full realization:

The human person needs to endow oneself with meaning and is restless until this is achieved. That such restlessness has the form of desire indicates that one’s goal is outside oneself. This goal is not easy to determine, because it is not simply given with the desire, but must be suggested to desire by the intellect. In order for this to exercise its guiding function correctly, it must be clarified most carefully.

The present attempt at such clarification has led to the conclusion that such a goal is given by love, correctly understood, rather than by satisfying impulsive instincts. The French philosopher-playwright, Gabriel Marcel, underlines this in the following text.

1. A detailed explanation of these spheres of interaction can be found in my Estética de la creatividad. Juego, arte, literatura (Barcelona: Promociones Universitarias, 1987).

2. Cf. R. Affemann, La sexualidad en la vida de los jóvenes (Santander: Sal Terrae, 1979). L. Cencillo, Líbido, terapia y ética (Estella: Verbo Divino, 1974).

3. Cf. op. cit. (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1969), p. 110.

4. Cf. Der Mensch vor der Frage nach dem Sinn, p. 155.

5. G. Marcel, Etre et avoir (Paris: Aubier, 1953), pp. 196, 216, 219, 222, 236, 243-245, as summarized by R. Troisfontaines in De l’existence à l’être (Paris: Vrin, 1953), I, pp. 234-235.